Flower Market Funding Greening of Chiswick High Road |
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Teaming up with Cultivate London to improve flower beds Horticultural apprentices from Cultivate London plant up the flower beds May 31, 2023 Surpluses from the highly successful monthly Chiswick Flower Market are to be ploughed back into improvements to the High Road. The organisers have teamed up with local horticultural charity Cultivate London and has made a commitment to help fund a two-year maintenance programme for flower beds in the centre of town. The initiative will be organised in partnership with Hounslow Highways, the London Borough of Hounslow’s Public Finance Initiative (PFI) contractors responsible for streetscape throughout the Borough. Cultivate London has been commissioned to come up with a sustainable, pollinator-friendly and robust design the flower beds. Lead designer Auberon Bailey got together with his team of apprentices and trainees and put together a design using a plant palette structured around grasses, kniphofias (red hot pokers), euphorbias and hebes. These plants were chosen to blend with the existing survivors of the municipal planting within the beds, and to provide evergreen coverage and colour. The scheme will not only be an investment in the local green public realm but will help train the young gardeners of the future. Cultivate London runs several community gardens, and a community gardening programme with local schools and residents’ groups, and offers landscape gardening for larger residential developments and private individuals Chiswick Flower Market director Karen Liebreich says, “While we appreciate the work of Hounslow Highways, when there are changes to street layout, the existing planting is no longer sufficient, and it is helpful to have some additional input, such as that offered by the Chiswick Flower Market. Not only does the planting transform the public realm and the biodiversity value, and improve the commercial appeal of the High Road, but we are also supporting Cultivate in their aims of training up the next generation of gardeners and landscapers, providing employment for local young people.”
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